Heard a networker say 'don't bother with LinkedIn events' but I made 3 solid leads at one in Tucson last month

Do you think old-school in-person meetups are dying out or is the real value still in shaking hands and swapping business cards face to face, especially for smaller Arizona businesses?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_nina1mo ago

Three leads from one event in Tucson sounds like it worked fine for you. I think people overthink this stuff honestly. If you're selling to small business owners in Arizona who still use paper calendars and landlines, a handshake probably works better than a LinkedIn message. But it's not some life or death strategy, it's just another way to meet people.

felix8241mo ago

The part people miss is what happens after the event. You can go to a hundred networking things and shake a hundred hands, but if you don't follow up within 48 hours those leads turn into nothing. I've seen guys collect business cards like trading cards and never call anyone. That three leads from Tucson only matters if Felix actually called them back. A lot of folks treat networking like it's the main event when it's really just the warmup. The actual work is the boring stuff like making phone calls and sending emails afterwards.

keithbennett1mo ago

Three times out of ten that 48 hour window closes even faster than that. I know a guy in Phoenix who runs a construction supply company and he swears by the 24 hour rule. He says if you haven't reached out by noon the next day you might as well throw the card away. The REAL trick nobody talks about is figuring out WHO actually needs to hear from you. Not every handshake means a lead. Some of those Tucson guys probably just wanted someone to vent to about their own business problems. Felix needs to sort through those three names and see which one actually has a budget and a decision making timeline that matches up with what he's selling. Otherwise he's just wasting time on people who were being polite at a conference.